Is A Gritty ‘Power Rangers’ Reboot Heading To Netflix?

Rita Repulsa isn’t the only one keeping an eye on the Power Rangers. ‘Dredd’ producer Adi Shankar has also set his sights on the team, and as you might expect, he has something a bit different in mind.

Shankar, who is currently producing an animated adaptation of the long-running ‘Castlevania‘ games for Netflix, mentioned in an interview that his next big project is an animated ‘Power Rangers’ adaptation. The project, which Shankar describes blending the world and characters of ‘Power Rangers’ with the fight sequences and storytelling style of ‘DragonBall Z’.

Says Shankar, “It’s a complete retelling of the first three seasons, and it’s going to be really fucking dark. Darker than any other ‘Power Rangers’ series.”

Ideally, says the producer, the show would find a home on Netflix, which he feels would be an ideal fit for his preferred approach to the series’ storytelling, adding: “If you look at what shows are life today, they’re long movies. It’s a format paradigm and I want to explore creating these types of new shows with ‘Power Rangers’.”

Of course, within ‘Power Rangers’ fandom, Shankar is also known as the producer of Joseph Kahn’s short film ‘Power/Rangers’. A similarly dark and gritty reimagining of the franchise, Kahn’s short (which starred Katee Sackhoff and James Van Der Beek) was released – and quickly taken down – in February 2015. While this may be something of a minority opinion, I’ve always felt that short was something of a mixed bag at best, coming across more as a reflection of what a fifteen-year-old thinks is “adult” or “edgy”, more in the vein of a Michael Bay film or the worst comics of the ’90s than anything that would do justice to the idea of applying a more adult storytelling approach to the conceptual framework of ‘Power Rangers’.

To be clear, while Shankar is hard at work developing the first season of his ‘Power Rangers’ adaptation, the project has not been picked up by a network and it is currently unclear what involvement (if any) Saban Brands has with project at this stage (which is anything but a sure thing, given the rights holder’s response to the ‘Power/Rangers’ short).

Be sure to check back with ScienceFiction.com for more on Shankar’s ‘Power Rangers’ reboot as the project progresses.